Vanishing Velez

Starting Weight: 267 lbs.
Current Weight: 250.2 lbs.
Total Weight Loss: 16.8 lbs.
Goal Weight: 140 lbs.
Pounds to go: 110.2 lbs.

I know that it’s not technically time to weigh in, but it’s been almost a month, and I don’t go back to the doctor until mid May, so I figured now was as good of a time as any to weigh in. I haven’t lost a ton since my last weigh in, and I’m still not back down to my lowest weight, but I am proud of myself.

Anyways…back to business!

As of approximately 10:30am on Friday, 04/05/2024, I am officially scheduled for weight loss surgery! I got the call at 10:22 from St. Mary’s, which I was very surprised by, since they just received my medical clearance the day before. But I guess they had already submitted everything else. I digress…

One of their schedulers called me and told me that I was good to schedule surgery. They told me that I would need a more official medical clearance since the one I gave them was from February, and I responded with “that’s OK, I have my physical in May.” This seemed to confuse her, since she expected that I would want to schedule sooner than that. I told her, “no, I have a friend getting married on the 22nd of June and Dr. Shetty told me I’d only need to do a 1 day liquid diet, so I’m going to hopefully schedule my surgery for June 24th. She said that that was totally fine, so we got me in the books for that.

For more information about the diet I need to follow, see the nutrition handouts post

Once that was on the books, we scheduled my pre-operative appointment. It appears that I will need to meet with Kaitlin and Dr. Shetty one more time before the appointment, so that is also scheduled for June 6th. That appointment should only take about half an hour, so I really don’t know what is going to be covered in that appointment.

Lastly, she informed me that I would need to have blood work done, and asked what lab I used. I told her that I use Quest, but I already had a series of bloodwork scheduled for mid May before my Physical, so would that suffice or would I need to repeat the tests-because I don’t think my insurance would cover doing the tests twice that close together. She asked what tests I was having done, so I pulled up MyChart and listed off everything that they were doing. I guess that that was enough for them, because she said that there was just one other test that I would need to do, so she would order the test and that I should tell the phlebotomist to also do the tests for Dr. Shetty while I was there. I mean, that’s really no big deal since it should all be able to be accessed through MyChart anyways. If for some reason they can not access it, I can always ask my PA to send over the results, so it shouldn’t be a big deal.

And then, that was it.

Not going to lie, this is the first time that I’m actually feeling a tad bit nervous. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t know that this surgery was going to happen. I literally have been documenting the process for months, and have done tons of research. This surgery IS happening. But before now, it kind of just felt like I was going to doctors appointments-especially because there was always that possibility that I would not get approved for surgery. Now, surgery is scheduled-so it’s really happening. I mean, I can still back out. I don’t think I will, because this was so much time and money, but still. I find myself looking to my husband for reassurance that this is the right decision. He agrees that for my health and for me to be around for Bea, I need to have this surgery.

I don’t know what I’m looking for here-confirmation that I’m doing the right thing? Support? Success stories? I’m really not sure. If you’ve got any ideas, send them my way.